The final version of the U.S. DOT’s rule to mandate the use of electronic logging devices, published in early December, maintained the major anti-harassment provisions included in FMCSA’s March 2014-published ELD mandate proposal.
The measures fleshed out in the rule come, at least in part, in response to a 2012 court ruling that concluded FMCSA failed to include adequate safeguards in its 2010-issued ELD mandate to protect truck operators from harassment from carriers via ELDs (then called EOBRs). The court also vacated the rule because of it, sending it back to the DOT’s drawing board.
The new mandate, the compliance date for which is Dec. 18, 2017, devotes a quarter of its key components to harassment prevention measures and implements penalties for carriers that violate those measures.
In the new rule, FMCSA defines harassment and explicitly prohibits it, institutes safeguards against it and spells out a process by which drivers can file complaints over ELD harassment.
Also, the harassment safeguards don’t necessarily take effect on the Dec. 18, 2017, ELD compliance date. They instead take effect when use of an ELD begins, even if that’s before the December 2017 compliance date.
Harassment definition/prohibition
FMCSA in the final ELD rule defines harassment as “an action by a motor carrier toward a driver employed by the motor carrier (including an independent contractor while in the course of operating a commercial motor vehicle on behalf of the motor carrier) involving the use of information available to the motor carrier through an ELD…or through other technology used in combination with and not separable from an ELD, that the motor carrier knew or should have known would result in the driver violating” this hours regulation and this hours regulation.
